Evidence of a deluge: Some evidence is that people, aside from Judaism and Christianity have passed down similar stories.

We all know it exists in Christianity and Judaism. But similar accounts exist in Babylon, Greece, the Finish, Chinese, Korea, Islam and the Mandaeans of Northern Iraq. Native Americans also expressed this belief in their early encounters with Europeans, though they had not written it down previously. In Hindu mythology, texts like the Satapatha Brahmana mention the story of a great flood. There are many others but this is just from a quick search from Wikipedia. I think there must be some hint of truth in these "myths". Geologists (aka scientitsts) seem to accept this as will be shown later.

Other evidence includes finding seashells on tops of mountains. Some later came to believe it was because of glacial periods. But there is no way of telling whether glaciers, a flood, pr both are actually accountable. The only fact is that seashells have been found on tops of mountains.

"Some geologists believe that quite dramatic, unusually great flooding of rivers in the distant past might have influenced the legends.[citation needed] Also episodes of massive flooding of short duration of ocean coastal areas have been caused by tsunamis. One of the latest, and quite controversial, hypotheses of long term flooding is the Ryan-Pitman Theory, which argues for a catastrophic deluge about 5600 BC from the Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea. This has been the subject of considerable discussion, and a news article from National Geographic News in February 2009 reported that the flooding might have been "quite mild".

"There also has been speculation that a large tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea caused by the Thera eruption, dated about 1630–1600 BC geologically, was the historical basis for folklore that evolved into the Deucalion myth. Although the tsunami hit the South Aegean Sea and Crete it did not affect cities in the mainland of Greece, such as Mycenae, Athens, and Thebes, which continued to prosper, indicating that it had a local rather than a regionwide effect."

Another hypothesis is that a meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3000–2800 BC, created the 30 kilometres (19 mi) undersea Burckle Crater, and generated a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands.[4]

It has been postulated that the deluge myth may be based on a sudden rise in sea levels caused by the rapid draining of prehistoric Lake Agassiz at the end of the last Ice Age, about 8,400 years ago.

If there is no evidence at all like you claim then why so many hypothesis from geiologists? I can only assume that geologists do not agree with you.

Neither a meteor nor a tsunami equate to 40 days and nights of rain to the point of covering the entire world, inluding Mt Everest, with 15 cubits of water. Glaciers melt as they recede causing flooding in local area. Just because it's evidence of a flood, doesn't mean it's talking about that flood. Floods happen every year.

Seashells at the top of mountains is explained by the "just a theory[1]" known as Plate Tectonics. This explains Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Mountains, Valleys like Rift Valley/Death Valley, Tsunamis, why certain geographic features over vast oceans resemble each other[2], AND why seashells are at the top of mountains.

You see, you're putting the cart before the horse. Ancient man found shells in places far from water and tried to explain 'why' to thier fellows. If you pretend to know the answers, you become king of your tribe. If you say, "I don't know," people will ignore you and go to the next person hoping that person will pull something out of thier *** and follow them. Like Mohammed and why children sometimes look like the mother and other times like the father. The only wrong answer in these situations was to say, "I don't know." You make up any other kind of BS and people will believe it for thousands of years, regardless to how wrong you were.

It should be obvious that SOMETHING happened to cause all these myths.

So there IS evidence or geologists would dismiss it entirely.

No one here is disputing there were massive floods in prehistory. However, there is no evidence of a world-wide flood, as per a literal reading of Genesis.

There is certainly evidence of the flooding of different regions at various periods, including records kept by local cultures. This is not surprising, as early agricultural societies (and even nomadic societies) depended on rivers for water and arable land.

But again, there is no evidence that every culture, world-wide, experienced a catastrophic flood at exactly the same time. Such an event would leave traces that could be easily dated to the same period; AFAIK, this has never been shown to be true.

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Live a good life... If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.--Marcus Aurelius

I do love the equivocation between punishment and suffer. One suffers a punishment, Jane. If we did nothing wrong, we should not have to suffer for it, if your god is the benevolent being you claim. It’s like saying well “suzy spilt the milk and was punished by having no cookies, but we’re also not giving any cookies to jimmy because he was on the planet at the same time”.

Oh? Tell that to the 4 children who, as I type this, are grieving for their father who was killed by a drunk driver last night. The drunk's sin is the cause of the kids' suffering; such is the nature of reality. They did nothing to deserve it. No man is an island and all that. What we do impacts others around us, sometimes with horrific results. [/quote]

I don't mean to go too far back in the convo, but, in order for the drunk death to be equivocated with original sin, wouldn't all of humanity have to suffer for the drunk's actions and not just the kids?

You calm the f**k down. You stop with the childish behaviour, you stop with the insults, you stop the frothing at the mouth hostility, you don't treat people like they're fucking idiots and you show some God damn respect. You are perfectly welcome to disagree with us, we allow and encourage this discourse, but when you participate on THIS forum you leave that attitude at the door. We do not have this trouble with other theists - do you see JST or Magicmiles behave like a child? No. I suggest reading the thread I linked because there's useful responses there. In said thread I've tried explaining EXACTLY how to avoid the road you're on (and that's a ban, you've already broken several forum rules).

Don't like the fact this response contains profanity directed at you? Then please try not insulting my peers.

« Last Edit: May 05, 2012, 04:47:17 PM by Seppuku »

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“It is difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet” - Miyamoto MusashiWarning: I occassionally forget to proofread my posts to spot typos or to spot poor editing.

It should be obvious that SOMETHING happened to cause all these myths.

Yes there is. Humans have always built cities near large sources of water, until roughly modern day. So stories about floods would be extremely common among those cultures. Just as every culture tells stories about great hunters and warriors, or great leaders. It's for the same reason all cultures have love stories, and stories of revenge, and of young insignificant farm boys who grow up to be kings. We still tell disaster/apocolypse stories in our movies and literature even though we know they're largely unrealistic.

These things are common to the human experience. Because they speak to certain things common to us as a species.

You can't just assume that because a lot of humans have thought of something it has any genuine truth to it. That's where real evidence comes in.

« Last Edit: May 05, 2012, 05:25:42 PM by Alzael »

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"I drank what?!"- Socrates

"Dying for something when you know you'll be resurrected is not a sacrifice.It's a parlour trick."- an aquaintance

Philip of Macedon: (via messenger) If we enter Sparta, we will raze all your buildings and ravage all your women.Spartan Reply: If.

Evidence of a deluge: Some evidence is that people, aside from Judaism and Christianity have passed down similar stories.

If the entire world flooded over, killing every living thing on it except for Noah and his family, there would be no other stories from Babylon, Greece, the Fins, the Chinese etc. All the people who could have told that story or remembered the events would be dead.

But we do have stories of flooding from many different places that we must account for. Can you think of a non-deity reason for this? Here is a simple reason... civilizations require water. All of the early civilizations from around the globe cropped up around water sources. Large water sources are known for doing what? Flooding. It happens all the time. That doesn't mean the entire world flooded over.

There are many others but this is just from a quick search from Wikipedia. I think there must be some hint of truth in these "myths". Geologists (aka scientitsts) seem to accept this as will be shown later.

I just gave you a rational explanation for why there are many flood stories throughout history in different regions of the world. Where does the logic of it fall apart for you?

Other evidence includes finding seashells on tops of mountains. Some later came to believe it was because of glacial periods. But there is no way of telling whether glaciers, a flood, pr both are actually accountable. The only fact is that seashells have been found on tops of mountains.

Plate tectonics Jstwebbrowsing. When continents collide, they get pushed upward. Ocean bottoms that were once covered in creatures from the sea can eventually become mountain tops. If you don't believe me, go ahead and draw little sea shells on your fingernails, put your hands on a table with the fingers facing each other and push them together. What happens to your fingers? They go up. As an aside, when they rub against one another, the friction causes earthquakes as the large rock masses slide past. The reason you don't see it personally is that it happens over millions of years, but it's simple to understand, and we know it happens. The earthquakes you can see, however.

It should be obvious that SOMETHING happened to cause all these myths.

Yes, and that SOMETHING is lots of local flooding on large scales because all civilizations require fresh water sources and those sources flood a lot. You would have lots of flood stories if that happened, wouldn't you? And that would also explain why some cultures have no flood stories at the same time. This is, by far and away, a simpler way to understand the stories.

There is copious amounts of evidence that local floods happen all the time. There is no evidence that the entire world flooded over. Sorry.

Here is the thing Jstwebbrowsing. For most of your life, you've been taught a certain way. To believe certain things. You've been given ONE side of a very, VERY two sided argument and you have clung to your side because it's all you've known. Don't feel bad; there are millions of people like you out there. Now, however, you are dealing with people who have been given lots of information from both sides of the argument and who have come to the reasonable conclusion that all of these things you talk about are better explained by reasonable, evidence based methods. Science offers better answers than God does. It's that simple. Don't you think it's in your best interest to listen to BOTH sides? We have good reasons to think that God is not real. Lots of them.

Evidence of a deluge: Some evidence is that people, aside from Judaism and Christianity have passed down similar stories.

Where did all the water come from?

And what about the Chinese and the Egytians? Their empires were thriving at the time.

there was an ice-age.....ice melted...localized flooding ,,,,,ignorant sheep herders get flooded and write about it as a world flood because they had no knowledge of anything outside the immediate area they lived???

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There's no right there's no wrong,there's just popular opinion (Brad Pitt as Jeffery Goines in 12 monkeys)

Well first notice rain is not the only thing the Bible says caused the flood. "The floodgates of the watery deep were opened."

The bible is just a book that says things that may or may not have happened. What 'floodgates of the watery deep' is the book talking about? If you would like to prove there is a watery deep area on our planet with enough water to overflow the entire earth above Mt. Everest, be my guest. If you can't, then please consider that the book just might be wrong here.

What? Are you being serious here? I'm sorry but that is absolutely ridiculous. So when we say that the flood stories could be local stories, that doesn't make you think... hmm, maybe they have a point there? When we tell you about how plate tectonics move the bottoms of the oceans upward slowly over time which explains why sea shells are on top of the mountains, you don't think... maybe they're on to something with that? The more you learn you think it's true? Really dude? I can't... I don't even know what to say to you. That's completely nuts.

If you are learning your 'facts' from religious websites, then you are obviously going to get arguments that defend the notion that the Noah story is real. What you THEN have to do is clear your mind of the faith you have that God exists and logically consider-very seriously-the arguments from people who disagree with the arguments and the grounds they give for their disagreement. Only then can you really say you've heard both sides of the argument honestly and are ready to make a conclusion. If you do that, you'll quickly appreciate the fact that the "Noah's flood story is real" side is patently stupid. It's just not realistic for so many reasons.

In all seriousness now... forget that you believe in God for a moment and just consider the facts. Given what we know of our world... Is it likely that a 900 year old guy built a boat that housed 2 of every species in the ENTIRE WORLD on it, and floated around for 40 days and 40 nights until the rain covered every inch of the earth, and then when it stopped, he repopulated the planet by having sex with his kids? Or is it MORE likely that the people back then... just made something up, or wrote down a local flood myth? PLEASE be serious now. Which is more likely?

So we know that a flood "could" have occurred and we have Noah saying a flood "did" occur. Is this not evidence?

Evidence that the Earth was covered with water during Noah's life and that every other civilization on Earth died out as a result of it? I have a hard time stopping myself from laughing at this question. No. It is obviously not evidence.

Local floods DO occur. We have a book that claims the entire world was covered with water. There is no evidence that this has EVER occurred at any time.

So SOMETHING did happen to Noah. He described it as a flood. At what point do we stop believing his record? As soon as he mentions God?

Jstwebbrowsing... The bible is a work of art, not a non-fiction historical record. We stop believing Noah's story the minute it makes claims that would typically make you say "There is no fucking way" if you read them in any other book. If you don't do that, then you're being dishonest, because you know as well as I do, that if you read a story about a man that lived to be 900 years old, you'd say... 'Yeah right. Whatever. This shit is not real."

Believe it or not, YES, every single person in your life who has taught you about God COULD be wrong here. They really could. And so could you. You have to allow that possibility to sink in, or you will gain nothing from being here. Open your mind to the possibility that you could be wrong and that everything you've been taught is a lie. There is a whole other world out there for you to look at.

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Whenever events that are purported to occur in our best interest are as numerous as the events that will just as soon kill us, then intent is hard, if not impossible to assert. NDT

Well first notice rain is not the only thing the Bible says caused the flood. "The floodgates of the watery deep were opened."

There is also the theory that only the world, as Noah knew it, suffered this calamity. Or even all of civiliation at that time was the extent of the "world" flood.

The more I learn the more I'm coinvinced it's true. So we know that a flood "could" have occurred and we have Noah saying a flood "did" occur. Is this not evidence?

So SOMETHING did happen to Noah. He described it as a flood. At what point do we stop believing his record? As soon as he mentions God?

On the northwest coast of Canada we had flood stories as well....the waters from the ice-melt had to go somewhere....we could also journey by land between Alaska and Haida Gwaii at some point in time....now it is a threating shallow strait between Alaska and Haida Gwaii.

The earth has been through MANY changes.....none of them biblical in nature

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There's no right there's no wrong,there's just popular opinion (Brad Pitt as Jeffery Goines in 12 monkeys)

We are told that the ark came to rest on Mt. Arat. Which is over 16,000 feet high. Water has a bad tendency to level out on its own, which means that for the water to be that deep, it had to cover all of the globe, even if some mountain rangers were not covered.

Now you just said that maybe that the water might have only flooded that region. It would have had to be much shallower not to affect the rest of the world. And remember your argument about sea shells (you didn't mention that they were fossils, but you did mention the sea shells) that you said prove the flood. They are found near the tops of the Himilayas, which are, like, you know, almost twice as high as Mt. Arat.

And while you are saying maybe, we are saying definitely. That there is definitely not enough water to flood that deep, that there is definitely no evidence to show that it ever did. We are saying that there are definite explanations, with multiple proofs, that the continents move around, that mountain ranges are formed out of low lying rock when such masses meet and cause the surrounding land to be pushed upwards. We can map the specific rock formations that match exactly where South America broke away from Africa. We can also map the same exact fossilized species that existed in both of those rock samples.

We have living tree colonies that are over 35,000 years old. We have amazing cave painting in France that are dated at 35,000 years old. Which have never been under water, or they would have been destroyed. We have a planet full of plants, few of which would be able to survive so long under water. Especially 6 miles of water, which would put thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch on the land and grind most anything organic into dust. Biblical adherents ignore the fact that fresh water fish cannot handle salt water, and vice versa. Only a few can do that, like the salmon, and then only during certain parts of their life cycle. So how did the fish survive water that was too salty to be fresh, too fresh to be salty?

Why is Crater Lake, an extinct volcano in Oregon that is , at the lowest point on the rim, about 7,000 feet high, filled with wonderful, fresh, drinkable water? Were it once filled by flooding seas, it should be salty. It has no runoff and it's water level is controlled by rain/snowfall and evaporation. Were it at one time full of sea water, it would still be salty. Even if the water was not as fully salty as the ocean.

And there is other evidence. We have drilled through the ice cores in Greenland, where every winter a new layer of ice is formed, and where every years layer is discernable because of seasonal changes in the snow, which becomes ice as it is buried under the next decade worth of snow. And we have ice cores going down through over one million such layers. Just to be clear. One million layers equals one million years.

We have living tree colonies that are over 35,000 years old. They could not have survived a flood. We have amazing cave painting in France that are dated at 35,000 years old. Which have never been under water, or they would have been destroyed.

A geologically explainable flood and deluge occurred at least ten times in the Pacific Northwest, where Lake Missoula, an ancient body of water, occasionally breached ice and rock dams, allowing water to flood across Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington, then down the Columbia to the ocean. Those floods left huge, and I mean huge, deposits of river rock. The largest such deposits in the world. Water came out of the lake in such huge volumes it equalled ten times the flow of all other rivers in the world. Water that sat in the lake right where I am sitting right now in Montana (I would be under water if it were 12,000 years ago) ended up in my home town in Oregon just a couple of days later. A distance of about 450 miles as the crow flies, 650 via the route it took.

There are no other, and I repeat, no other rock deposits in the world that large. None. If an epic scale flood of the sort you think happened covered, or mostly covered, this planet, time and time again the evaporating waters (and where would it go?) would get trapped behind mountain ranges until it could all flow out and such huge floods should have happened all over the world. But they didn't.

12Monkeys Haida tribe and other native Americans have oral histories that go back to the time of the migration from Asia, 10 to 12 thousand years ago. Archaeological evidence confirms humans have inhabited this continent at least that long. The many pieces of evidence that have been excavated from sites on both the North and South American continents would have been washed away in any flood that covered them that deeply.

Sandals woven of sagebrush, over 10,000 years old, were found in a cave in Oregon. Any worldwide flood would have destroyed them completely. They survived because they were in a dry cave in a desert.

My list could go on literally for days. We have a multitude of reasons to know (not doubt) that there was no flood.

None of this evidence was gathered specifically to disprove a flood. It was gathered in efforts to find out what the history of our planet has been via geology, biology, paleontology, archaeology and other specialties. Chemists and physicists, botanists and ethnographers, all have gathered evidence that matches well with other evidence of a much older and never flooded earth. And all have gathered evidence that matches not at all with the biblical account of a flood.

In other words, we can explain the whys of many an earthly phenomenon, and not one requires or even hints at a huge deluge. Not one. Yes, there have been regional floods which left plenty of evidence. The whole of the Mediterranean sea filled up via a flood when a natural dam near the Rock of Gibraltar broke. The Black Sea filled from the Mediterranean in a similar fashion. But those events took place long before there were people. And the evidence for those and other localized floods abound. But for a world-wide flood? Not one shred of evidence. Not one.

Didn't mean to shortchange your people there, 12. A friend here on the Flathead Reservation told me that her oral history goes back about around 12,000 years and I extrapolated.

Her tribe considers the story sacred and transmits it only orally. Is the Haida story treated similarly, or is it published in any way? I would love to hear such a story.

I did read a book (the name of which I sadly forget) about ten years ago that was the history of one native group. It started in Siberia and the departure was inspired by multiple earthquakes. Man I wish I could remember what that book was. Their story was incredible. And beautiful.

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Anyone can beat around the bush. But unless you have permission from the bush, you probably shouldn't.

The more I learn the more I'm coinvinced it's true. So we know that a flood "could" have occurred and we have Noah saying a flood "did" occur. Is this not evidence?

No. Are you kidding? Ok, let's look at this in the best possible light. We have one thing that could have happened (if you ignore reality and about half the laws of science) and we have a two thousand+ year book which says that it did occur (but not in anyway that any of the other civilizations were around at the time noticed). In what warped frame of mind does that constitute evidence?

Didn't mean to shortchange your people there, 12. A friend here on the Flathead Reservation told me that her oral history goes back about around 12,000 years and I extrapolated.

Her tribe considers the story sacred and transmits it only orally. Is the Haida story treated similarly, or is it published in any way? I would love to hear such a story.

I did read a book (the name of which I sadly forget) about ten years ago that was the history of one native group. It started in Siberia and the departure was inspired by multiple earthquakes. Man I wish I could remember what that book was. Their story was incredible. And beautiful.

I was just telling you what I know was not offended... Which story are you reffering to ....creation story? or the story that may date back to how we came to be here?

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There's no right there's no wrong,there's just popular opinion (Brad Pitt as Jeffery Goines in 12 monkeys)

Jst: As you say, there are similar flood stories in other cultures besides the Hebrew one. But that doesn't prove anything as far as a flood actually happening. First off, all these different groups communicated with each other, and thus cultural diffusion would have ensured that the stories got spread around. Second, as others have pointed out, there's evidence which strongly contradicts the whole idea of a worldwide flood, and to a large degree a localized one according to the lineage timeline in the Bible. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that the flood story as related in the Bible is literally true, especially when you consider the improbability of several of the elements of the story; the huge number of animals that would have to have ridden on the boat without killing each other, the amount of food necessary to feed all those animals, the seaworthiness of a boat that large, just to name three.

Per Occam's razor, the explanation that makes the least number of assumptions is the most likely to be true. There are a large number of assumptions implicit in the Noah story; how did Noah keep the predators from killing other animals, or each other for that matter? How did he get them to the boat? Where did he store the huge amount of food necessary to feed all those animals for the months, possibly years, that the boat was out on the water? How did he store all that food without spoilage? How did he feed the carnivores? How did the boat survive the pounding of the wind and waves as the deluge came down? This is by no means a complete list, but it should certainly illustrate why the idea of the flood as written in the Bible is problematic at best.

..glad to see this rubbish has been thoroughly answered and battered. I like my fish crispy.. As well as my muscles and sea-shells that I find fossilized on mountain-tops..

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"If you find yourself reaching for the light, first realize that it has already touched your finger.""If I were your god, I would have no reason for judgement, and you have all told endless lies about me. Wait - you do already. I am not amused by your ignorance, thoughtlessness, and shallow mind."

Since there is no global flood known to science, then science would predict the existence of complex inter-species relationships that could not be explained by the Noah's ark story. Noah could rescue a select groups of animals from one continent, but there is no way for him to re-establish some complicated inter-species parasitic/comensal arrangements (esp animals vs plants).

The Noah's ark story has little concern for the extermination of plant life - showing naivety of the person who wrote it; not even aware that plants and grass would be killed. The dove comes back with a live olive leaf (apparently). This is told with a straight face. Given that the story spells out every other little detail, you expect some kind of mention of how all the plants survived, and how Noah sowed grass seeds, so that the cattle could eat. It requires a naive fantasy to ignore the problem by the writer, and the same naivety not to notice by the reader.

We know that environments that have suffered disaster, like UK, which was under an ice sheet, become very simple. We would expect to see a very simple world ecosystem, with no complex relationships, if the story of Noah was true. (But we don't) So, it requires further fantasy from creationists that God sped up evolution after the flood, to bring back biodiversity, so that it matched fossil records.

Animal-plant comensal relationships are a good place to start, if you want to rid yourself of the delusion of Noah. Look at Armarillus, Mistletoe, Eucalypt, Mistletoe bird. A creationist offered me a solution to this problem: he reckoned that there were giants rafts of vegetation that floated around in the ocean, which preserved plant life and these types of relationships. (Rafts that humans could have lived on.)

There is no way to escape the delusion of Noah, you will always be able to dig yourself back into the delusion, with a new invention that is not detailed in the Noah story, and has no factual evidence.

Well first notice rain is not the only thing the Bible says caused the flood. "The floodgates of the watery deep were opened."

Floodgates...

Do you know what's associated with floods? I live near a river, and it floods all the time so I do. A wall of water. It looks like a dam had burst, but of course If god had made a dam, it wouldn't have burst. Like the windows in the firmament that allows rain, the gates provide the wall of water for floods.

However the reality is, the same mechanism that creates the wall of water, is the same exact mechanism that creates the flood to begin with. Rain. Lots and lots of rain.

Thay didn't know 6" of rain, river goes up gradually.... 13" there's so much run off, it creates a wall of water. It took someone else, much later to decide to measure rain. The bible is simply an appeal to ignorance. They had no idea how the world worked, they simply stated how it looked from the most basic way.

1) Tsunami.2) An enormous amount of seawater blasted upward into a corona that would fall back to Earth as a salty rain in a circle away from the blast center.

Babylonian myth says that the Leviathon (LTN) under the direction of Tiamat, the Demoness of Chaos, once made a bid for the sea to take over the land.

That might be what is described in the various flood legends around the Indian Ocean. But as I said in another thread on this, we must remember that there are repeated stories from Germanic and Slavic sources of talking bears who once had a civilized life and even founded the cities of Berlin and Berne. You can have a lot of similar stories with no basis.

Here is one that Astreja can check more easily. I think she has the sources. I once read a digested version of the creation story of the Eddas. It had one of those flood legends. But the legend sounded to me like an exaggeration of a jöjkullhlaup, that is, when geothermal heat melts a glacier from below so it contains a hidden lake of water until it bursts out. This has wiped out -- really eradicated -- places in Iceland such as a town that disappeared in an instant as recently as the 1700s.

I read other descriptions one of the supposed universal flood legend. The Mayan one is not about rain but about a tsunami. Considering the volcanoes in the Caribbean...

The Chinese and Japanese legends are creation stories about land arising from the chaos of the seas, not about a flood that happened after the Earth was settled.

Other evidence includes finding seashells on tops of mountains. Some later came to believe it was because of glacial periods. But there is no way of telling whether glaciers, a flood, pr both are actually accountable. The only fact is that seashells have been found on tops of mountains.

Plate tectonics Jstwebbrowsing. When continents collide, they get pushed upward. Ocean bottoms that were once covered in creatures from the sea can eventually become mountain tops. If you don't believe me, go ahead and draw little sea shells on your fingernails, put your hands on a table with the fingers facing each other and push them together. What happens to your fingers? They go up.

Both wrong. No one says that the grinding glaciers could leave intact shells.

JeffPT, you are partially right about the plate tectonics. You don't know that below those shells in mountain ranges are complete limestone layers vertically sandwiched. This is thousands of feet of lime from an old ocean bottom. The mountains on either side are the old shores of 2 continents that collided and pushed up.

Divergence. In 2000 I participated on a skeptics forum in Oregon and Washington. The head of it had done some original research. For instance an artifact was found in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, a rock with 500 million year old seashells embedded and an x-ray showed a metal object inside. Not a tool. There was a high tech coil of some sort. This produced 2 speculations:

1) Ancient astronauts.2) A creationist said it was an artifact from an advanced civilization drowned in the Flood.

The skeptic got a professional opinion from a geologist that when lime washes out and mixes with mud it can sometimes form a lump low grade naturally occurring concrete. Old seashells washing out can become part of that. As for the device, he took the x-ray to a spark plug collector who identified it as a Ford Model A spark plug.

I have always understood that the "world" that was destroyed was not the earth itself, but rather the "world of mankind". I believe this misunderstanding is what causes some believers to think that God is going to destroy the earth with fire in the future. This is not so, according to my beliefs. The "world or mankind", minus any of those God chooses to spare, will be destroyed but not the earth itself.

I have known for a long time that at that time people did not populate the entire earth. However, when picturing the flood I always pictured people living all over the globe, so out of necessity the "entire earth" had to have been flooded. Sometimes I am so blonde. But a global flood need not be the case if all of mankind was localized.

And I have always accepted that large parts of the Bible are written from the point of view of a human, in this case Noah. So the entire earth as he knew it was destroyed.

So to me the only possible questions left are:

1. How local was the flood? Was the "world of mankind" really destroyed in it's entirety?2. Did Noah have anvance warning?3. Did Noah build an ark and survive it?4. Did all the flood myths originate from an original? If so then is the Bible's version accurate.

What was the "watery deep"? I've often asked this question to myself and I never could figure it out, and didn't really do any research on the matter. But now I am reasonbly sure it referred to either a tsunami or the sea. And I think most likely the latter, or even a combination of the two.

If you keep changing the definitions for words and moving the goalposts then there isn't anything you can't accept. Looks like you might be headed in the right direction with the waffling though. Oh by the way, at the time that Noah's flood was supposed to have happened there were people present on all the continents except for Antarctica.

« Last Edit: May 06, 2012, 07:30:28 PM by mrbiscoop »

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When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. -Emo Philips